The Review

All posts, comments andstatements made on IR are those of the authors only. Any disputes must be addressed to the writers, who are solely responsible for their posts, comments and statements. We reserve the right to deny or remove comments. Content may not be used without permission of the author.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Navigating the Hazards of an Industrial Age

By John F. Di Leo -

On May 11, 1996, 105 passengers boarded a ValuJet flight in
Miami, bound for Atlanta. They never
made it.

Shortly after takeoff, a small explosion in the airtight cargo
hold developed into a fire, which should have burned out quickly, but didn’t. The 27-year-old plane’s crew of five, and all
105 passengers, were killed as the plane plummeted into the Everglades.

Many chalked this up to the dangers of plane travel and the
poor maintenance record of ValuJet, which, as a budget carrier, certainly gave plausible
grounds for the argument… but it wasn’t a lack of maintenance that caused this
crash; it was maintenance by the wrong maintenance crew.

The plane didn’t crash because of bad upkeep or failed
systems or old or broken parts. It
crashed because a maintenance worker put a box of Hazardous Materials in the
cargo hold, and, apparently out of sheer ignorance, did everything wrong.

The box contained compressed gas canisters, products
classified as an oxygen generator. When that
fire started in an airtight cargo hold, as the theory goes, the lack of oxygen
would cause it to burn itself out right away, but with oxygen generators
present, that theory couldn’t work out.
The box that apparently caused the fire provided its own fuel, defeating
the perfectly reasonable safety precautions put in place by the airplane’s
manufacturer and the FAA.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to ship hazardous
materials. With small quantities of liquids,
for example, they have to be properly capped and sealed, encased in the proper,
approved boxes, often with sufficient absorbent material to contain a spill,
the outer box sealed tightly. With
gases, they need to be in approved canisters, with a proper closure, the
closure sealed and protected with an outer guard so that jostling won’t cause
it to open up and allow the contents to escape.
Unless made of a very thick gauge metal, they generally have to be
enclosed in an approved box, durable and well-sealed, again to reduce the odds
of unintentional discharge. There are
such rules for every conceivable hazardous material.

The SabreTech employees who maintained this plane were told
to send this partial box of oxygen generators to Atlanta. What a coincidence, this very plane was
headed there. So they set the box in the
cargo hold and thought nothing of it.
They weren’t transportation people; they were just mechanics, so they had
never been properly trained on the regulations governing HazMat shipping. It was truly an accident, but such a terrible
one that they and their employers were naturally prosecuted for criminal
negligence.

Hazardous Materials
Regulations

The United States has long had regulations in place for
Hazardous Materials shipping. Found, for
the most part, in 49CFR 171 through 178, these regulations split Transportation-hazardous
materials and wastes into nine distinct Hazard Classes – explosives, compressed
gases, flammable solids and liquids, radioactives, toxins, corrosives,
radioactives, and lots more. These regulations
then provide a HazMat Table to identify each specific product, and sets of
rules on how approved packagings should be made, and which ones can be chosen
for each type of product, according to its specific type and level of risk.

Generally speaking – yes, there are exceptions, but
relatively few – these products must be identified, then packaged in the
approved package for the intended mode of transport (there are different rules
for truck, rail, sea and air), and then must be marked, labeled and documented
according to specific standards. The
truck or sea container must often be of approved type, and must often be
placarded with those eye-catching diamond signs (the regs call them “square on
point” instead of “diamond”) that tell you from a block away whether the
product is a flammable liquid, a compressed gas, a corrosive.

Get closer, and a four digit UN number on the placard may
tell you more precisely, sometimes even the exact product inside. You’ve probably seen the number 1203 on the
road more often than any other; that’s a tank truck of gasoline ahead of you. Spend enough time in this business, you’ll
get to know dozens or more by heart, but you’re trained never to trust your
memory. Check the Emergency Response
Guide (ERG) to be sure.

The regulations spell out all these rules and more –
classification, packaging, quantities limits by mode and packaging, even
exceptions and exemptions for limited quantities and lesser risks – and they do
so in a manner consistent with the worldwide airfreight HazMat system run by
ICAO, and the worldwide seafreight HazMat system run by the IMO. These international organizations have cooperated
with member countries for decades, standardizing more and more every few
years. Today, these regs are closer than
ever to being identical, though they’re still not perfectly harmonized.

The Reasons Behind
the Regulations

There are lots of government regulations on safety, and many
are downright nuts. The EPA regulates
water filters because they trap impurities in your drinking water, so
apparently they’d rather see you drink the impurities unfiltered than dispose
of them in a landfill with the rest of the garbage. A ban on DDT, resulting from a claim that it
was bad for birds, has caused millions to die in Africa from malaria as a
result. We’ve all seen OSHA rules that
are well-intended and often helpful, but often go too far, pricing American
locations out of reach for new manufacturing plants.

But the HazMat regulations are different. These are reactions to a special need – the greater
risk that many products cause while in transportation, while traveling the
public roads, rails, waterways and air currents. These regulations don’t cover all products,
but only the ones that pose a special risk in transportation – due to a greater
likelihood that they could cause a spill, an explosion, a crash, a fire. If a shipper deals with such products, he
must obey these regulations, not only to protect himself and his own property,
but to protect the others who share the roads, the warehouses, the yards and
ships through which his product will move.

There are two reasons for Hazardous Materials
regulations: First is to reduce the
likelihood of an incident occurring, and Second is to provide information for
the emergency responders.

Ship the product right, in the right packaging and in the
allowed quantities, properly sealed and marked, and the carrier knows to treat
it with care, knows where to stow or segregate it, knows to give it the proper
handling that it requires, whatever its level of risk.

And then if there is still an incident anyway, the labeling
and placards, in conjunction with properly prepared and filed documentation,
will enable the emergency responders to use the best method for containing and
terminating the danger. Do we use water? Foam? Tarp? Do we shut down a block,
or quarantine for a mile? It all depends
on what the documents and placards say, so they must be chosen with care, by
people who know how.

HazMat Training
Requirements

U.S. law requires that all employees involved in the classification,
packaging, marking, labeling, booking, documentation, loading, and transporting
of hazardous materials must have proper HazMat training, covering at least the
products they will encounter in their roles, at least once every three
years. Go one day past the three year
mark without a refresher, and you have to stop.
The three year figure is firm.

The IMO – the corresponding ocean regulations – require the same
three year timeframe for theirs. And the
IATA regs – governing airfreight – have a tighter two year requirement. Again, go a day past the expiration of your
last training, and you can ship all the non-haz cargo you want, but you can’t
touch a HazMat order until you get that refresher under your belt.

Americans who ship in all modes therefore need three kinds
of training – 49CFR, IMO and IATA – and must schedule regular refreshers. Companies suffering tough times may cut back
on many things, from free coffee to travel to bonuses, but this is one area in
which they cannot cut corners. Everyone
defined as a “HazMat Employee” in 49CFR 171.8 simply must be on this training
schedule.

Huge chemical companies may have internal training programs,
other manufacturers may customize their own approach for the few HazMat
products that their employees will encounter.
Most others, however, find it most convenient to send their staffs to
regularly scheduled seminars offered by trainers who specialize in this field,
such as DGI,RTI, Unz & Co, and JJ Keller.
And nobody lacking this training had better help out with a HazMat
shipment; the law is firm, and with good reason.

How Do We Know?

Generally speaking, if your firm isn’t a chemical company,
you don’t have many experts in such matters… but the law still applies to you. The dangers in the transportation system aren’t
the thousands of loads properly shipped by chemical giants like Dow, DuPont, BP
and BASF, after all; such giants consider this a core competency and know how
to do it. The dangers are from the sales
office that ships a paint can wrong, the manufacturer that sends epoxy to a
satellite office, the buyer who wants to return an unsatisfactory ingredient to
a vendor, the promotions department sending a box of free cigarette lighters
bearing the company logo, the facilities department closing up a plant and
shipping all the contents to a head office before the new tenant needs the
site.

Every company, whether in the chemical business or not,
needs an internal policy to check every MSDS of every chemical it uses. It’s
the easiest thing in the world: look for the Transportation Information section
in the MSDS, and see whether it says “not regulated” or not. If it says “not regulated,” then anyone can
ship it legally (still, always be careful, of course!)… and if it says anything
else, such as the hazmat text “UN1993, flammable liquids, nos, 3, II”… then it
can only be shipped by someone who’s had the training, not by anyone else. Require the MSDS check, and you’ll be well
along the way to practicing Safety First, as indeed we all ought.

From ValuJet to the
Present

In the years since the infamous crash of ValuJet Flight 592
on May 11, 1996, there has been a massive effort in the business community to
improve these processes. Companies
better understand their obligations under the law; their staffs are more aware
of the risks inherent in Hazardous Materials than ever before.

But still there is a natural assumption that if we deal with
it at the office, it must not be anything to worry about. We don’t realize that a pressurized can that’s
pretty safe at sea level can become an explosive in a pressurized
airplane. We don’t realize that this can
of touchup paint, this bottle of industrial solvent, could start a fire if
spilled inside a truck… we forget that the vapor of some flammable products is
more dangerous than the liquid itself.

So we need to do more, in every business, to educate our
staffs – our buyers and salesmen, as well as our transportation and
shipping/receiving personnel – to keep our companies safe.

As we work to save the American business community in an
ever more hostile environment, we must not let such basic safety fall to the
wayside. The United States should be
greatest manufacturing center on earth, and it can be again. As we walk that road, let’s walk it
safely. If we learn from the tragedy in
the Everglades, then at least some silver lining will appear in that dark, dark
cloud.

Copyright 2013 John
F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a
Chicago-based Customs broker and international trade compliance trainer. His experience with hazardous materials has
taught him to respect the many true experts in the field, talented regulators
and trainers who help keep our roads safe for the growing commerce of a free
and bustling market!

Permission is hereby
granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are
included. Follow John F. Di Leo on
Facebook or LinkedIn, or on Twitter at @johnfdileo.

Comments

Navigating the Hazards of an Industrial Age

By John F. Di Leo -

On May 11, 1996, 105 passengers boarded a ValuJet flight in
Miami, bound for Atlanta. They never
made it.

Shortly after takeoff, a small explosion in the airtight cargo
hold developed into a fire, which should have burned out quickly, but didn’t. The 27-year-old plane’s crew of five, and all
105 passengers, were killed as the plane plummeted into the Everglades.

Many chalked this up to the dangers of plane travel and the
poor maintenance record of ValuJet, which, as a budget carrier, certainly gave plausible
grounds for the argument… but it wasn’t a lack of maintenance that caused this
crash; it was maintenance by the wrong maintenance crew.

The plane didn’t crash because of bad upkeep or failed
systems or old or broken parts. It
crashed because a maintenance worker put a box of Hazardous Materials in the
cargo hold, and, apparently out of sheer ignorance, did everything wrong.